Ray Liotta Biography

Ray went to a local high school where he was more interested in sports than academia, excelling at soccer and basketball. While he was at high school, the family took him and his sister on vacations to Japan and Europe and he worked part-time at his father’s store and helped his parents, both ardent Democrats, canvass for the party.

Persuaded by his father to go to college Ray attended the University of Miami and took up drama as a hobby, by all reports more out of boredom and to meet girls than from any real calling. He somehow got a part in a production of Cabaret despite messing up his audition and forgetting the words to his song. His first turn on the boards was followed by other musicals such as West Side Story and The Sound of Music. He found his niche though with dramatic roles in Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire.

Liotta left university with a theatre major and moved to New York. His first break came just three days after arriving when he was spotted by casting agents while accompanying a friend to a studio. Ray landed a TV commercial and within weeks he was auditioning and screen-testing for movies.

In 1978, only a few months after arriving in New York, Ray’s piercing eyes and hunky good looks landed him the role of Joey Perrini in the long-running soap opera Another World. Ray stayed with the role until 1981 and then scored small parts in TV movies including the family movie Hardhat and Legs and the coming of age movie Crazy Times, starring alongside a young David Caruso. A TV series based on the classic movie Casablanca was next though; it meant a move to California for filming.

Liotta contacted his old university friend Steven Bauer who lived in Malibu with his then wife Melanie Griffith. Bauer swapped his house for Liotta’s New York apartment and through Griffith, Ray met Heidi von Beltz, a stunt-woman who had been paralysed in a car accident while making Cannonball Run. The two became friends and then started a relationship which lasted a year.

Ray’s turn in Casablanca playing Sacha the bartender to David Soul’s Rick character only lasted for three episodes. A small part in 1983’s The Lonely Lady in which he sexually assaulted star Pia Zadora with a garden hose nozzle was Ray’s first “unhinged” role. More TV work followed in 1984 and 1985, most notably on the show Our Family Honor, and then Liotta’s big break occurred in 1986.

Through Griffith he auditioned for a role in her up-coming movie Something Wild. He got the part and his portrayal of Griffith’s maniac ex-criminal ex-husband scored him a Boston Film Critic’s Award and his pedigree as a dangerous, explosive type was formed.

Liotta resisted the temptation to take all the maniac parts offered to him after Something Wild though and his next role was as a starring role as a brother caring for his slow sibling in the feel good movie Dominick and Eugene. He turned up in Kevin Costner’s baseball movie Field of Dreams in 1989 playing the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of the Chicago Black Sox players banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series. While Field of Dreams was a high profile movie, it was his next movie that would place him firmly in the pantheon of Hollywood stars.

Liotta scored his starring role in the 1990 mob classic Goodfellas through determination and dogged persistence. He reportedly approached director Martin Scorsese at the Venice Film Festival and the way he calmly but forcefully talked his way through the director’s bodyguards convinced Scorsese to cast him. When producer Irwin Winkler disagreed with Scorsese’s decision Liotta tracked Winkler down. In a brief conversation in a restaurant bar, Liotta convinced the producer and the next day Scorsese was given the go-ahead.

Opposite Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, Liotta’s turn in Goodfellas as the scheming, cocaine-hoovering, back-stabbing mobster; Henry Hill was a career-defining moment. Liotta prepared for the role by spending time with the real Henry Hill and listening to FBI tapes of his conversations with other mobsters. The film, with its 2.3 “F words” per minute, was nominated for six Academy Awards and won best picture at numerous others including the BAFTAs and Golden Globes.

Liotta stayed scary in 1992’s Unlawful Entry playing a policeman who saves Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe but turns creepy on them. 1994 saw a turn to action as the hero in the futuristic thriller No Escape and then a dramatic turn in Corrina, Corrina with Whoopi Goldberg the same year. He turned back to psycho in the airplane thriller Turbulence and returned to his New Jersey roots with 1997’s Cop Land playing a corrupt New York City policeman in sheriff Sylvester Stallone’s quiet New Jersey town.

After Cop Land Liotta proposed to his girlfriend of a few years, the actress Michelle Grace, the former wife of a baseball star. The two were married in Thailand and again in Las Vegas to make it official under American law. Michelle appeared with Ray in his next TV movie The Rat Pack where he played Frank Sinatra and the couple had a daughter, Carson, in 1998.

A selection of films over the next few years would fail to make much impact until 2001 where he appeared in the Silence of the Lambs sequel Hannibal and as Johnny Depp’s father in the cocaine-smuggling movie Blow. Forming his own production company in 2002, Liotta made the critically acclaimed film Narc.
 

He divorced from Michelle in 2004 and the same year appeared in an episode of the TV drama ER for which he won an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. A string of movies in 2005 and 2006 failed to register (Slow Burn, Revolver, Control) but he appeared in the biker-comedy Wild Hogs in 2007 with a host of other waning stars like Tim Allen, John Travolta, William H Macy and Martin Lawrence. In February 2007, he was charged with drunk driving after crashing his car near his home in Pacific Palisades, California. No one was hurt.

Despite a quiet patch, Liotta has a slew of projects in production for 2008 including roles opposite Cuba Gooding Jr, Sean Penn and Harrison Ford. His proven track record suggests he will back on top of his game, terrorising the unwary or tugging at heart strings, before long.